The typical process by which architects and engineers are hired and do their work includes many steps. For example, an owner develops a concept that describes a proposed building's use and approximate size. He then engages an architect. The architect hires the required engineers, and the team produces a design and a contract document in keeping with the concept and budget. This contract document may be composed of computer-generated drawings and written schedules and specifications. Taken together, these documents may represent all physical and cost aspects of the complete building. Currently, the graphics software used in this process is industry specific; however, the text software is general business.
The aspects of the contract document, including the detail, specification, and schedule, are then bid by general contractors and after some revisions, may be subsumed into a contract between the owner and the contractor. The architect observes the construction for compliance with the design.
The architect's prime interest lies in the conceptualization and design development phases. The creation of the aspects of the contract document, however, including the detail, specification, and schedule development, as well as their coordination, requires highly technical expertise and precision, and is considered drudgery by many. These tasks often suffer due to lack of time, interest, or sufficient experience. In fact, these tasks are often performed by junior members of the firm who lack the experience to do them efficiently, and thus they require extensive supervision by senior members of the firm. Shortcomings in the final document may result in project cost overruns for the owner and hours of unanticipated work for the architect.
In view of this, several chronic problems exist in the architectural, engineering and construction industry. One is the backbreaking amount of detail work required of the professionals, along with ever shrinking schedules, resulting in higher stress, higher costs, and lower incomes. Another is the difficulty and time-consuming process of obtaining manufacturer's information as it is needed. Compounding these problems is the existence of only a few options for automating any portion of the architectural design development process. This industry is one of the least automated of all industries.
Architects and engineers are hired to design buildings and other structures. In order to get these structures built, the architects and engineers produce what is called a contract document, which comprises several complimentary aspects, including the agreement between the owner and the contractor; the drawings, which include plans, elevations, sections, and details; schedules which list attributes of repetitive building parts such as doors, windows, hardware, and finishes; and the specifications, which are the written, detailed descriptions of the materials and processes that make up the building. A schedule, for example, would indicate to a contractor what type of finish a door might have, and a specification would indicate how that finish is applied.
At present, these aspects are created primarily manually and independently of one another. That is, each one requires its own input and execution, and the coordination between each is done manually by the architect and engineer. Each of these aspects has its own characteristics. Some are project specific and others are simply modifications or variations of a standard detail.
The system of the present invention automates the architectural process. Plans, elevations, and sections are project specific, but a majority of details, which are the graphic description of the assembly of construction elements, are standard, with some variation from project to project. For example, a floor plan is unique to a particular project, and therefore needs to be drawn for that project. However, a door or window detail, which is the drawing that shows how the unit fits into a particular wall, can be generalized and therefore used on any project that has those same conditions.
In preparing aspects of the contract document, including drawings and specifications, architects and engineers rely on production tools, such as computer programs, and information, such as manufacturers' literature. Architects and engineers perform tasks at the levels of output; that is, they produce aspects of a contract document in their final form; there is no intermediate input form process that they use. A schedule, which is a device used by architects and engineers to provide detailed information about a door, window, room finish, or the like, are created for each item in a computer-aided design (CAD) format or in spreadsheet form where each cell is populated manually. A detail, which is a drawing that shows the actual assembly of parts, is drawn one line at a time, or alternatively, by retrieving and modifying old files. A specification is prepared by modifying a previous specification or using a database or word processing-based template.
The production tools that attempt to assist with more than one aspect of the contract document do not do so automatically in that the process of generating a second aspect, if available at all, requires additional steps beyond a single entry of information into the system. Such additional steps may include downloading a detail library and separately selecting generic details that may additionally require modification to reflect the various features desired. Thus, the drawing, specifying, and product selection are three distinct processes that are currently disconnected and not automated.
More recently, for specifications, a program using an actual user interface that is not in a word processing format has been available. This program utilizes a directory tree structure. Also available is a program that uses a database format user interface where text is viewed in a database cell.
The present invention advances the automation of the architectural process. The system provides for a single entry of information for assembling the data required and for generating the aspects of the contract document used by architects and engineers.